


Strange

by lionofsounis



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Fluff, blatant overuse of walking into hell for one another, blatant rip off of shakespeare quotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29192157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionofsounis/pseuds/lionofsounis
Summary: "I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?"***After the Pent ambassador incident, Irene and Gen talk about love and jealousy and other failings of character. (And briefly make fun of all their friends for being their friends).
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Strange

**Author's Note:**

> Me, writing a pairing other than Costis/Kamet? It's more likely than you think. Anyway I hope you enjoy this and if you do I love you and also if you clicked on this fic at all i love you

_“I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?”_

***

The Queen of Attolia looked up at her husband, seemingly asleep. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her cheek pressed gently against his chest, which rose and fell with gentle breaths. His hair splayed against the pillow. One long tendril had fallen down on his face, quivering with each exhale. She reached up to tuck it out of the way.

Eugenides was not asleep.

At least, not fully. "Irene?" he mumbled.

"Who else?" she asked, not as archly as she intended.

"Maybe I've finally taken a mistress," he said around a yawn. He hadn't opened his eyes.

"That would be extremely embarrassing considering how you treated the Pent ambassador yesterday," Irene pointed out dryly.

"I wouldn't stop you killing a mistress." He didn't even try to temper his petulance.

Irene gazed coolly up at him. "You would not," she agreed.

She would kill him first and he knew it. But he only chuckled. "It's a pity Costis isn't around," he mused. "He would take my side."

Irene was rarely unqueenly, even with Eugenides, but her responding snort was one such rare moment. "Costis is as much a fool as you, sometimes."

Eugenides sighed dramatically. "And here we thought he'd turn out like Teleus. Alas."

Irene reconsidered. "He has plenty of Teleus's bad qualities too. Or perhaps they are qualities you share with Teleus."

"My love, you wound me."

"You will survive."

"And so will the Pent," Eugenides said heavily.

Irene rolled her eyes. "Yes, consumed with fear that you are lurking in the shadows waiting to slide a knife between his ribs. You, meanwhile, will continue in a state of petty and needless jealousy, which is far more reasonable."

Eugenides huffed, then said in a lofty tone, "I will admit to jealousy, but petty and needless seems a bit much."

"Is that so?" Irene raised herself up on one elbow to glare at him. "You really think the Pent has anything with which I can be tempted?"

Gen shifted, suddenly wary. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

Irene had shifted too; there was an elbow on either side of him and she glared down at him. "Over and over, you asked me if I believed that you loved me. And now I find -- repeatedly -- that you do not believe me."

He blinked. He thought. And confounded, he made no move to respond.

"I have loved you, you idiotic, incorrigible, pig-headed dolt of a man, despite my better judgment, and the judgment of those I trust, and you have the audacity to doubt it just because some fool of a Pent cannot understand the word 'no', or because some courtly flatterer writes me poetry, or because of a man I took advantage of long before you made any overtures to me. And if you think I do not love you, then you are a bigger imbecile than I have ever given you credit for."

Irene had not meant to get angry. She hadn't thought she was angry. She had certainly not thought Eugenides doubted her love for him. But nevertheless that was what she had just said.

Perhaps her mouth knew her feelings better than she did.

Gen was still blinking at her, but less confusedly now. The space of a heartbeat passed before Irene felt the brush of his fingertips, feather-light against her cheek. Some days, she still wondered if her face was carved from stone, a mask devoid of emotions, covering up a heart equally empty.

"That's not--" Gen stopped. "That's not what I thought."

"No?" she prompted, and was surprised at how she longed to hear him say it, even after all this time.

"No, Irene," he said, his voice even softer than his touch had been.

"I love you," she said firmly, as if daring him to contradict her.

"I believe you."

"So. Then is there any need for petty displays of jealousy such as we saw yesterday, My King?"

"I suppose not," said the king meekly.

"Good," she said, and settled back into the crook of his mutilated arm.

He sighed contentedly, then there was a pause, followed by another, more petulant sigh. "I don't think it's too much to expect of ambassadors not to kiss my wife, though."

"Of course it is not," said Irene, as soothingly as she could manage, which wasn't very soothing. "But that does not change the fact that you are jealous of someone who could never hope to supplant you."

"Maybe so," Eugenides conceded. "I can't help but think, though, that you might feel differently if the tables were turned and there were women constantly throwing themselves at me."

Irene sat back up in a rush, glaring again. "Is that so?" she asked dangerously, then once more. "Is that so?"

Eugenides moved as if to sit up, but Irene's hand found his chest and shoved him back into the mattress. "You ridicule your cousin who is Eddis," she said, and he knit his brows in confusion, "you insult her taste in clothes and jewelry. You have called her ugly to her face and to anyone else who will listen. You still call Sophos Useless the Younger. You bullied your most faithful guard into hitting you in the face and have used him as a pawn in your stupid plans ever since. You freed a slave only to use him as a pawn as well. You all but kidnapped the grandson of one of your most significant enemies and coerced him into serving you. I cannot even begin to list the ways you have abused Sounis's magus, or your attendants. Yet every single one of them would march straight into the mouth of hell for you if you asked. And you have the audacity to say people don't throw themselves at your feet out of love for you?"

"It's not the same," he protested weakly.

"Indeed it is not," Irene agreed. "I am merely admired for my outward appearance. You are admired because you have bullied and badgered everyone around you into falling irrevocably in love with you."

Gen scoffed, but the sound was awkward, not forceful. He worked his jaw uselessly, then settle for saying, "I hardly think they're irrevocably in love with me."

"As I said, they would march through the gates of hell for you. If that is not irrevocably in love, I don't know what is."

"Irene, are you--" Gen paused to swallow. He sensed danger, but he could never resist a stupid idea. "Are you jealous?"

Irene's face remained impassive, staring down at him. The silence seemed to drag on endlessly. Finally, she spoke, echoing him, "am I jealous?"

"Well, are you?"

Irene pressed her lips into a thin line, then said, "perhaps."

Gen grinned. Irene hated that grin. It warmed her down to her toes. Of course no one new how it set her stomach a-flutter, but still, a heart that pitter-pattered at the sight of a cheeky smile seemed incongruous with the stoic, steely persona she'd worked so hard to cultivate. That particular grin always seemed to appear on Gen's face when she least wanted to see it and usually it ended in her agreeing with him when she intended to do the opposite. Maddeningly, she also wanted to see it every second of every day and missed it when he wore any other expression.

"Well," said Gen, cozying into the plushness of the mattress, "I'm sure Costis at least would march into hell for you, too. And possibly Sophos as well."

"That is only because Sophos is more afraid of me than he is of hell," Irene pointed out.

"Hm, true. Well, Pheris may, when he grows up."

"You're changing the subject."

"I am not!" Gen protested. "You said I have no business being jealous because you and everyone else I happen to like would march into the gates of hell for me, and I merely asked if you were, in turn, jealous of me. We're still talking of jealousy, are we not?"

"We are meant to be discussing yours," said Irene wryly.

Gen pouted. "Are we not equal partners?" he expounded, in a tone of grievous injury. "Is not what is mine also yours? Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh? Are my triumphs not your triumphs? My failings your failings?"

"Emphatically not," Irene interrupted.

Gen's grin reappeared. "Ah, but you married me."

The queen scowled. "So, so, so."

Gen reached up to curl his hand in her hair, pulling her lips to his. There they stayed for a long moment, a chaste, gentle moment, but a moment that seemed to stretch out into eternity.

When they parted Irene was smiling faintly. Gen was still grinning.

Irene settled herself onto his chest, burying her face in his neck and reaching over to stroke his hair in a way that, though it seemed absent, was anything but. He shivered. She said, "I don't actually recall saying I would march into hell for you."

Gen scoffed in outrage, but when he snapped his face over to look at her, she was still smiling.

He tried to smooth his face back into some semblance of dignity and attempted to sound wounded. "They warned me you would be a cruel mistress."

"I would have thought cutting off your hand made that abundantly clear."

"And yet I would march into the gates of hell for you, isn't that strange?" He spoke lightly, but as he finished he looked over at her. His dark eyes glittered seriously, and his grin was gone.

"Very strange," she agreed, equally serious.

He found her free hand in the sheets and twined her fingers between his before bringing it to his lips.

"So," he said, "we have established that we are both hideously jealous creatures, that we are very much loved despite abusing all our friends and relations, and we would each journey to the underworld for the other. If that is not a sharing of failings, I do not know what else could be."

"So, so, so," said Irene again, then, "Gods help me."

Eugenides laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> do i end every tqt fic i write with the characters laughing fondly at one another? yes because i want them to be happy


End file.
